Field of Endeavor:
The present invention relates generally to the field of containers for transportation, storage and shipping. More particularly, the invention relates to systems, apparatuses and methods for manipulating a storage container, loading it onto a vehicle, transporting it to another location, and unloading the container from the vehicle.
Background Information:
In the shipping industry, it is desirable to utilize all of the space available at any given storage containers. The simple stacking of many boxes having nonuniform shapes often results in wasted space in a storage compartment. Unused space in a storage compartment also increases the likelihood that objects stored there. In will shift during transport and the objects they contain may be damaged or broken.
Modular shipping has become more common and large-scale shipping vessels. However, much ground transportation is not conducted efficiently. In addition, trailers used for shipping may be several feet off the ground. This requires the use of ramps or simply lifting by human operators to place objects in the trailer itself. Trailer lifts have also been developed to assist in this.
Once objects are placed inside a trailer. It is often challenging to stack and arrange the objects transported in an efficient manner utilizing all available space, and in such a way as to prevent shifting and damage during transport.
And distribution centers, where cargo is redistributed among trailers, forklifts, are commonly used. However, it is difficult to operate a forklift inside a trailer. In addition, pallets generally used with standard forklifts do not have the same dimensions as that of a trailer. Thus, using forklifts may require less manual labor, but does not improve the ability to maximize use of storage space.
Is therefore desirable to provide a means to efficiently maximize the amount of space used inside a storage, or transportation container.
It is also desirable to provide a means for efficiently arranging transported objects inside a trailer or other compartment.